News ASRock Unveils the X299E-ITX/ac: Mini ITX + X299 + Quad-channel Memory

Mod edit:

Detailed overview of what we know about the X299E-ITX/ac thus far here: https://smallformfactor.net/news/asrock-x299e-itxac-little-monster-detailed

Original:

ASRock did it! Finally, there's an Intel HEDT platform motherboard with full quad-channel DDR4 memory. The new X299E-ITX/ac is for those who need up to 18 CPU cores and up to 64 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory in their SFF machines for reasons. The board manages its limited PCB real-estate by going vertical. It features two riser cards, one with a few onboard controllers, and a pair of 32 Gb/s M.2 slots), and the other riser with SATA 6 Gb/s ports, a third M.2 slot, and the headers such as USB 3.1. The board draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, conditioning it for the LGA2066 CPU using a 7-phase VRM. The lone expansion slot is a PCI-Express 3.0 x16, memory is handled by four DDR4 SO-DIMM slots. Connectivity includes two Intel I219-V driven gigabit Ethernet interfaces, 802.11ac WLAN, and Bluetooth 4.1.

Source

 

[drunker]

Three quarters of your rear IO, as well as all your wired networking!

Did you test this? I can't find the wiring diagram in the manual which is odd because they usually include something like this

 

[confusis]

Yes I did (including the fact that the ethernet controllers are on the rear daughterboard!)

"Removing the rear daughterboard causes quite a few issues. None of the rear USB works, and neither does the ethernet ports. This isn’t surprising, considering the controller chips for these ports are on this particular daughterboard. Booting without this board dumped me into the UEFI environment, and I was unable to do anything.. mostly because the input devices I was using were USB!"

 

[jwestfah]

Here's my build on pcpartpicker: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/Bkw6Mp

 

[Phryq]

Nice build... why are the 7820x and 7800x the same TDP?

What about undervolting for lower TDP?

 

[jwestfah]

Nice build... why are the 7820x and 7800x the same TDP?

Two fewer cores that can clock a little higher I guess.

I'm not sure about undervolting. I'm happy with it the way it is, and don't want to mess with anything

 

[Phryq]

The reason I'm thinking to skip this motherboard, is that Skylake X seems to hot for me.

an 8700k gets better performance than a 7800x, and it's only 95W vs 140W.

I wish they made this exact same board, but supporting different CPUs.

 

[Phuncz]

You shouldn't look at the X299 platform if your use-case doesn't benefit from more than 6 cores, more bandwidth than provided by Dual Channel RAM or more PCIe lanes connected to the CPU. And there is also AMD to consider these days, to make an understatement.
No, you would want this board for the 10+ core CPU and for the 64GB Quad Channel memory along with well-above-average connectivity.

 

[Phryq]

Well, I do need 64gb of ram, which is why I'm looking at this.

8700k (or Ryzen)
64gb of ram
SSD (of better, NVMe)
As small and silent as possible. Passive cooling is ideal, but I think impossible here, unless I build my own case with vapor-chamber madness.

The only 64gb motherboards I can find have too-weak CPU support. This one's the opposite; supported CPUs have too many cores.


Part of me really wants to build my own system, but when I look at this,

http://www.sagernotebook.com/Notebook-NP9155-S.html

I can get all the specs I want, it's smaller, and plus I'm getting the monitor/keyboard thrown in.... So this seems way more practical. The smallest I could hope to build with equal specs would be 6.8" x 6.8" x 6.8" (a 5L cube) whereas the laptop is 15.20" x 10.32" x 1.50", 3.8L. My worry is that the fan would be loud, and not nearly as fun as building yourself.

How can they build such a thing? I wish I could just buy the motherboard used in this laptop!

 

[Biowarejak]

Well, I do need 64gb of ram, which is why I'm looking at this.

8700k (or Ryzen)
64gb of ram
SSD (of better, NVMe)
As small and silent as possible. Passive cooling is ideal, but I think impossible here, unless I build my own case with vapor-chamber madness.

The only 64gb motherboards I can find have too-weak CPU support. This one's the opposite; supported CPUs have too many cores.


Part of me really wants to build my own system, but when I look at this,

http://www.sagernotebook.com/Notebook-NP9155-S.html

I can get all the specs I want, it's smaller, and plus I'm getting the monitor/keyboard thrown in.... So this seems way more practical. The smallest I could hope to build with equal specs would be 6.8" x 6.8" x 6.8" (a 5L cube) whereas the laptop is 15.20" x 10.32" x 1.50", 3.8L. My worry is that the fan would be loud, and not nearly as fun as building yourself.

How can they build such a thing? I wish I could just buy the motherboard used in this laptop!

The noise will probably be insanely loud, if I had to guess. Not to mention, if it isn't well engineered from a thermal perspective, your clock speeds will plummet.

 

[epithumia]

If you really just need 64gb in a small package, the X99 ITX board still exists. I'm sure there are other tradeoffs, though.

 

[drunker]

actually I just found out something really interesting. The x99 cpu can run with ecc memory just not in ecc mode. This will actually allow the x99 itx motherboard to go up to really high memory capacity.

 

[epithumia]

Yeah, Asrock actually advertises the board as accepting 256GB total RAM, so it must support 3DS LRDIMMs. Sadly those cost $3000 apiece and I just haven't had any excuse to get any. Some guy here wanted 2TB of RAM in a system but, well, 16 of those DIMMs was a bit outside the budget. (Not that 32x 64GB LRDIMMs was in the budget either.)

Too bad SODIMMs larger than 16GB are so hard to get, as it does limit the X299E-ITX/ac board. I know they exist (http://www.centon.com/memory/oem/27863-RDKO10073G03 for example) but I can't find anywhere to buy them in consumer quantities. I'm sure it will happen one day, though. Hopefully soon.

Edit: in case anyone asks, yes, I have contacted Centon for a quote on those SODIMMs. I'm sure I'm not the only one. No luck so far, but I will update if I hear anything.

 

[drunker]

Yeah, Asrock actually advertises the board as accepting 256GB total RAM, so it must support 3DS LRDIMMs. Sadly those cost $3000 apiece and I just haven't had any excuse to get any. Some guy here wanted 2TB of RAM in a system but, well, 16 of those DIMMs was a bit outside the budget. (Not that 32x 64GB LRDIMMs was in the budget either.)

Too bad SODIMMs larger than 16GB are so hard to get, as it does limit the X299E-ITX/ac board. I know they exist (http://www.centon.com/memory/oem/27863-RDKO10073G03 for example) but I can't find anywhere to buy them in consumer quantities. I'm sure it will happen one day, though. Hopefully soon.

Yes, 128gb modules are extremely expensive, I was hunting for someone who can supply me with those ram a year ago for the x99 itx build that I had in mind. They want $1500 per stick and I end up scraping the project because they are not willing to test the system compatibility for me.

I doubt that 32gb sodimm module is coming anytime soon because they are mainstream for laptops and I can't imagine any laptops need such high capacity ram. It's just doesn't make sense for manufactures to push a product like this.

 

[Phryq]

Oh, so this motherboard, http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/

Can support 64gb of ram if I use 32gb chips? But where can I buy 32gb ram cards to fit into it?

The x99 would also allow me to use an 8700k, as far as I know, right? So that'd actually be perfect (if RAM is affordable).

 

[VegetableStu]

The x99 would also allow me to use an 8700k, as far as I know, right?

where did you read this? o_o

 

[Phuncz]

Oh, so this motherboard, http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/

Can support 64gb of ram if I use 32gb chips? But where can I buy 32gb ram cards to fit into it?

The x99 would also allow me to use an 8700k, as far as I know, right? So that'd actually be perfect (if RAM is affordable).

No, the Core i7 8700K is a socket 1151 processor that only works on motherboards with the 300-series chipset, like the Z370 chipset. The X99-ITX/ac has an X99 chipset which supports the 2011-v3 socket, which supports previous generation's HEDT (High End Desktop) lineup.

The specs say this about memory:
- Max. capacity of system memory: 128GB (with Core™ i7 CPU Broadwell-E) or 64GB (with Core™ i7 CPU Haswell-E) or 256GB (With Xeon® CPU)*

As you can see, you can have even more memory, depending on CPU. If unsure, always check the Qualified Vendor List for compatible and tested hardware:
CPU QVL: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/?cat=CPU
RAM QVL: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/?cat=Memory

If you want a 6-core CPU on the X99 motherboard: i7-6800K, i7-6850K, Xeon E5-1650 v3 or Xeon E5-1650 v4 are good performers. But these require watercooling for silent computing with their 140W TDP, since it's using the "Narrow ILM" socket on the motherboard. Be sure to check for compatible coolers ! "Socket 2011-3" and "Narrow ILM" both need to be supported for the cooler to fit !

All the information can be found with the link you provided and some Google first-hits.

 

[vluft]

Well, put the board, a 7920x, & 64GB of ram in my FNW Tiki. Runs great, and the AIO (Asetek 550LC) I had cools it fine, but won't quite fit as the radiator fittings interfere with something in whatever orientation, so probably gonna try to find an air cooler that'll work – can't imagine any other AIO will work much better unless it has intake/output in the plane of the radiator instead of perpendicular to it which I haven't seen much at least.

 

[QuantumBraced]

TDP ratings are based on the base clock, which no one cares about really, so don't pay too much attention to them. My 6800K consumes just over 100W, it's overclocked to 4GHz at 1.16 VCore. Very quiet with a 120mm AIO in the M1. I would get an 8700K if I was building today. Or more likely an 7820X even though I don't need it, just to have an excuse to get this engineering marvel of a board and be part of history haha.

Here's my build on pcpartpicker: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/Bkw6Mp

First time I've seen the board in an NCase M1. Good job! It looks like one of the hoses interferes with the fan?

 

[jwestfah]

First time I've seen the board in an NCase M1. Good job! It looks like one of the hoses interferes with the fan?

The fan guards are on the inside, so there's no interference. But it is pretty close, and the hoses are pretty stiff.

 

[QuantumBraced]

The fan guards are on the inside, so there's no interference. But it is pretty close, and the hoses are pretty stiff.

Have you tried overclocking? How are your VRM temps? Ironically, the M1 may allow for higher overclocking of X299 chips than giant ATX cases, because it has a 120mm fan blowing straight on the motherboard (with an AIO or a C14/downdraft cooler) and cooling the VRM, which has been the bottleneck of Skylake-X overclocking.

I'm not sure if that only applies to 12+ core CPUs, but I'm curious how well you were able to overclock your 7820X.

Edit: Nevermind, you mentioned it in your description. I should have read that before I asked. Great result, and smart move going with SiliconLottery, these chips definitely benefit from delidding.